Tom Campbell files papers in governor race

CAMPAIGN 2010 Ex-congressman submits paperwork for fund committee

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Photo: Kat Wade, The Chronicle

Image 1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

Tom Campbell, dean of the Haas School of Business attends a Q &A with Chronicle business reporters and editors in San Francisco at the Chronicle building on Tuesday January 9, 2007.
Kat Wade/The Chronicle

Tom Campbell, dean of the Haas School of Business attends a Q &A with Chronicle business reporters and editors in San Francisco at the Chronicle building on Tuesday January 9, 2007.
Kat Wade/The Chronicle

Photo: Kat Wade, The Chronicle

Tom Campbell files papers in governor race

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

Former San Jose Rep. Tom Campbell is looking to become California's next governor, filing the papers needed to open a committee to raise money for the 2010 race to replace Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Campbell, 55, is the first Republican to officially become involved in the contest for governor, although state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, co-chairwoman of Arizona Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, have been mentioned as possible GOP candidates.

"This is a necessary first step," Campbell said Tuesday. "What I have to do now is interview people for my staff and see what support I can expect in a campaign."

LATEST SFGATE VIDEOS

Campbell, a former congressman and state senator, has been dean of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley since 2002, but he wasted little time jumping back into the political fray. He filed his paperwork to open his campaign for governor on July 1, the day after he left his job at Berkeley.

Plenty of people would argue that Campbell never really left politics behind during his years in academia. During his 10 years in Congress and two years in the state Senate, he remained a tenured law professor at Stanford University. In 2004, he took a leave of absence from his job as dean of Berkeley's business school to become Schwarzenegger's state finance director.

Campbell has been thinking about running for governor since that yearlong stint in Sacramento.

"As state finance director, I got an idea of what the job of governor involved," he said. "In that time, I saw the opportunities it provided."

He couldn't do anything more than think about that job during his time as dean, even after he announced in August that he planned to step down from the academic post.

"I was careful to avoid even coming close to crossing the line, so I'm beginning the exploratory campaign from a standing start," Campbell said.

Campbell has had his problems in the past with GOP voters outside his Peninsula-Silicon Valley political homeland because his reputation as a pro-choice, gay rights moderate doesn't square with the party's conservative base.

In 1992, Campbell lost a primary campaign for the U.S. Senate nomination to Bruce Herschensohn, a conservative political commentator. He won the GOP nomination for the Senate in 2000, under a since-eliminated rule that allowed registered voters to cast ballots for anyone in the primary, even members of other parties.

The rule helped moderates like Campbell get through their primaries, but it didn't do him any good in November 2000, when he lost in a landslide to Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

But the political world has changed dramatically since 1992, said Kevin Spillane, a GOP consultant who has worked with Campbell in the past.

"He was one of the most moderate congressmen in the Republican delegation and was not the choice of the party establishment," Spillane said. "But now, all three of the most likely Republican candidates in the primary are all Silicon Valley moderates."

A bigger question might be whether Campbell can compete financially with extremely wealthy Republicans like Poizner and Whitman, who could contribute millions to their own campaigns.

But Campbell has had to raise campaign cash in the past and did plenty of fundraising for the Haas business school.

"He's not afraid to pick up the phone and call people," Spillane said.

Latest from the SFGATE homepage:

Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page.